Thomas Friedman writes a regular column in the New York Times (NYT) and is well known throughout the outsourcing community for his book The World is Flat – an exploration of globalisation that takes in offshoring, outsourcing, and a new wave of services along the way.

His NYT column yesterday addressed the questions of the green agenda and how so much IT work is going to be needed to change IT systems so they are all carbon neutral, it should be obvious that a load of offshoring is going to take place. He suggests that India is the natural best destination for that offshoring to take place – for the combination of brains and value.

I agree entirely with his sentiments. It’s a fact that customers are going to soon be demanding carbon neutral IT suppliers. Any IT company today that is blundering along not thinking about this is going to be dead in the water when their biggest client calls them up one day and says we can only continue working with carbon neutral suppliers. This is even more important for IT companies with clients that are in energy hungry sectors, such as airlines, utility companies, or transport.

What I’m a bit doubtful of is holding up companies such as Infosys and Satyam as exemplars of this new breed of green company. I have nothing against either of them and I’ve done lots of things with both of these companies before, but it seems a bit forward to suggest that putting up a few solar panels is expressing leadership towards carbon neutrality.

IBM seems to only get a fleeting mention in the NYT article, yet IBM has very publicly announced its ‘Project Big Green’ which aims to turn the company inside out – not only going carbon neutral itself, but explicitly learning the best way of being able to advise others because the company has done it itself. The only Indian player I can think of that is actually carbon neutral is ITC Infotech. It is a mid-size organisation, owned by the massive ITC Group. It is already carbon neutral, so how come the company doesn’t get a mention?

Friedman is right, but we shouldn’t forget that the green agenda can be tapped for media coverage and the ‘feel good factor’. It’s not good enough to say that your company is green - it needs to be proven.